4 ms·
Ask HN: A search engine that excludes all sites with ads and/or paywalls?
I've decided to leave Google Search. It was nice for decades, but declined to being unusable.
Now I primarily use ChatGPT and Claude for my information.
However, I still need a search engine to find primary datasets, primary images, et cetera.
I prefer content from the personal blogs and websites of real people. I particularly love researchers who post their research to their own sites (in addition to or in preference of journals).
What engine should I switch to?
I don't want any sites to appear that contain ads or paywalls.
Right now I'm using Kagi, but appending site:*.edu to my queries to exclude paywall sites like ResearchGate.net.
Is there something better?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cranberryturkey 2y agocheckout perplexity.ai (I think that's it).
- breck 2y agoAh, hadn't tried that yet. Pretty neat. Will go in my toolbox, thanks. Still a little too commercial to be my primary, but thank you!
- cranberryturkey 2y agomy boss recommended it to me, it seems to yield almost identical results as chat-gpt but they site their sources better. It uses claude instead of openai
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 2y agoI've already tried Kagi and Perplexity, but now I'm trying You.com. What matters to me is the cheapest option.
- Calishat 2y agoThe Stract open source search engine has a setting to mark results with probable ads or paywalls: https://stract.com/settings https://stract.com/settings The API is currently free and also has that feature. I've been working on tools to make Google search better for a couple of years now and have gathered 18 of them into a site called SearchTweaks: https://searchtweaks.com/ https://searchtweaks.com/ . The site is completely free (no cost, no ads, no tracking.) You might find No Shop Sherlock useful, or one of the query builders.
- breck 2y agoUpdate: I've reverted back to Google for now. Kagi was neat, but requiring login for search was very bad ux(for example, I use multiple browsers, incognito mode, etc). I like the Google product, it's the search index that's full of junk. When researching and looking for high quality, original source content, I want a different index than what they currently offer. If anyone knows of a solution, would love to learn!
- carlosjobim 2y agoIt's not that difficult to log in everywhere. People act like their car broke down when presented with a login form. Use a password you can easily remember or a password manager, and you're good. Set up your phone to remember your e-mail so you don't have to type it all the time.
- kirubakaran 2y agohttps://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/ by our own https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=marginalia_nu https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=marginalia_nu